Battleground DOJ: How Trump is waging war on the so-called deep state
- By cigaretteman
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Deplorable:
It didn’t take long for the Trump Justice Department to launch an all-out war against what it considers the deep state.
The department on Thursday evening summarily informed senior officials in the divisions that oversee civil rights and environmental enforcement that they were being transferred to a newly created office to take action against sanctuary cities. The career lawyers were told they could either accept the reassignment or face disciplinary action, including removal.
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The transfers, involving at least six members of the nonpartisan Senior Executive Service with decades of experience in their areas of expertise, represent an unprecedented and unwise intervention into the topmost ranks of the civil service. As described by the Office of Personnel Management, members of the Senior Executive Service “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees.”
These are, by and large, nonpartisan experts in their fields, traditionally serving from administration to administration regardless of which party is in power. The Trump Justice Department’s actions, targeting four SES section chiefs in the Environment and Natural Resources Division and at least two additional officials in the Civil Rights Division, violate the long-standing practice that these professional attorneys carry over notwithstanding changes in administration.
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Worse, Thursday’s actions constitute a dramatic misuse of government resources — one clearly intended to cripple enforcement of laws that the new administration disdains and to drive career civil servants out of government. It takes the senior brain trust of key parts of the department and places them in an area in which they have no expertise. Many will leave the government, as their experience and specialized skills will be highly valued at private firms outside the Justice Department. Running the experts off is, of course, one goal of the Trump purge.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/17/trump-impoundment-congress-power-grab/
“Please accept this email as notice that you are being reassigned to the Office of the Associate Attorney General to be part of the Sanctuary City Working Group, effective today,” the individuals were informed shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday.
Calling the “Department of Government Efficiency”: Putting so many members of the department’s elite corps of SES employees in this one small area makes no logical or administrative sense. Who, exactly, are all these supervisors going to supervise?
“It’s potentially crippling to government operations and will put communities across America at risk if the Trump administration removes all the senior leadership of a particular agency or department,” said David M. Uhlmann, who served as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at Justice from 2000 to 2007 and later as assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden. “This has never happened before.”
The move follows the earlier transfer to the sanctuary cities office of senior officials in the department’s national security and criminal divisions, some of whom were involved in the August 2022 search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
In addition, the department fired outright the chief immigration judge and other officials involved in the immigration court system, actions that appear to run afoul of the legal requirement that employees receive at least two notices of poor performance before they can be dismissed.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an order entitled “Restoring accountability for career senior executives,” asserting that he possesses the constitutional authority to remove members of the Senior Executive Service, which currently numbers just under 8,000. “Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President,” the document states. Whether Trump’s claimed executive power can override statutory protections for civil servants is certain to be the subject of litigation.
The transfers will be difficult to fight. Federal law imposes a 120-day moratorium on reassignments of members of the Senior Executive Service after a new administration takes charge. But that moratorium only kicks in after the department head is confirmed, meaning that acting officials appear to have the authority to order the moves, according to experts on civil service protections. The DOJ declined to comment.
As chilling as the Trump Justice Department’s earlier moves were, given how they concentrated on those who had crossed Trump personally, the assaults against the civil rights and environmental divisions are disturbing in a different way, signaling an effort to quickly undermine, if not neuter, the professional attorneys who have been faithfully executing the laws from president to president.
A new administration of a different party is fully entitled to adopt different enforcement priorities. Elections have consequences; such changes are in the normal course of business. Though much of the Justice Department’s business continues no matter who is elected, the civil rights and environmental divisions in particular have historically been subjected to more turmoil and turnover than in other, less ideologically fraught areas. That was true eight years ago, as the Trump administration took over from the Obama Justice Department.
But Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be a more ruthlessly effective version of its predecessor. It is willing to barrel through norms in pursuit of its agenda; it is contemptuous of the bureaucracy and determined to make life as miserable as possible for those who had dedicated their lives to public service. This week, I fear, is only the start.
It didn’t take long for the Trump Justice Department to launch an all-out war against what it considers the deep state.
The department on Thursday evening summarily informed senior officials in the divisions that oversee civil rights and environmental enforcement that they were being transferred to a newly created office to take action against sanctuary cities. The career lawyers were told they could either accept the reassignment or face disciplinary action, including removal.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
The transfers, involving at least six members of the nonpartisan Senior Executive Service with decades of experience in their areas of expertise, represent an unprecedented and unwise intervention into the topmost ranks of the civil service. As described by the Office of Personnel Management, members of the Senior Executive Service “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees.”
These are, by and large, nonpartisan experts in their fields, traditionally serving from administration to administration regardless of which party is in power. The Trump Justice Department’s actions, targeting four SES section chiefs in the Environment and Natural Resources Division and at least two additional officials in the Civil Rights Division, violate the long-standing practice that these professional attorneys carry over notwithstanding changes in administration.
Follow Ruth Marcus
Worse, Thursday’s actions constitute a dramatic misuse of government resources — one clearly intended to cripple enforcement of laws that the new administration disdains and to drive career civil servants out of government. It takes the senior brain trust of key parts of the department and places them in an area in which they have no expertise. Many will leave the government, as their experience and specialized skills will be highly valued at private firms outside the Justice Department. Running the experts off is, of course, one goal of the Trump purge.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/17/trump-impoundment-congress-power-grab/
“Please accept this email as notice that you are being reassigned to the Office of the Associate Attorney General to be part of the Sanctuary City Working Group, effective today,” the individuals were informed shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday.
Calling the “Department of Government Efficiency”: Putting so many members of the department’s elite corps of SES employees in this one small area makes no logical or administrative sense. Who, exactly, are all these supervisors going to supervise?
“It’s potentially crippling to government operations and will put communities across America at risk if the Trump administration removes all the senior leadership of a particular agency or department,” said David M. Uhlmann, who served as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at Justice from 2000 to 2007 and later as assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden. “This has never happened before.”
The move follows the earlier transfer to the sanctuary cities office of senior officials in the department’s national security and criminal divisions, some of whom were involved in the August 2022 search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
In addition, the department fired outright the chief immigration judge and other officials involved in the immigration court system, actions that appear to run afoul of the legal requirement that employees receive at least two notices of poor performance before they can be dismissed.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an order entitled “Restoring accountability for career senior executives,” asserting that he possesses the constitutional authority to remove members of the Senior Executive Service, which currently numbers just under 8,000. “Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President,” the document states. Whether Trump’s claimed executive power can override statutory protections for civil servants is certain to be the subject of litigation.
The transfers will be difficult to fight. Federal law imposes a 120-day moratorium on reassignments of members of the Senior Executive Service after a new administration takes charge. But that moratorium only kicks in after the department head is confirmed, meaning that acting officials appear to have the authority to order the moves, according to experts on civil service protections. The DOJ declined to comment.
As chilling as the Trump Justice Department’s earlier moves were, given how they concentrated on those who had crossed Trump personally, the assaults against the civil rights and environmental divisions are disturbing in a different way, signaling an effort to quickly undermine, if not neuter, the professional attorneys who have been faithfully executing the laws from president to president.
A new administration of a different party is fully entitled to adopt different enforcement priorities. Elections have consequences; such changes are in the normal course of business. Though much of the Justice Department’s business continues no matter who is elected, the civil rights and environmental divisions in particular have historically been subjected to more turmoil and turnover than in other, less ideologically fraught areas. That was true eight years ago, as the Trump administration took over from the Obama Justice Department.
But Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be a more ruthlessly effective version of its predecessor. It is willing to barrel through norms in pursuit of its agenda; it is contemptuous of the bureaucracy and determined to make life as miserable as possible for those who had dedicated their lives to public service. This week, I fear, is only the start.
